To get this thread off of ethnic diversity and hockey, and back on topic (remember we are in "International Situations & World News", not Radio Chatter):

While it might be considered unorthodox, have people convicted of being involved in crimes like these ever been used as consultants?

For instance, while several of the articles listed in these 4 pages are of foiled plots (i.e. plot to import nuclear technology into Iran), the Parisian bombing suspect probably has some useful information that might prevent an attack in the future (though admittedly his might be less useful as its nearly 20+ years old.)

Has Canada ever used their arrested suspects as sources of intelligence on their methods, as opposed to just as sources of information on the attack itself?

'Toronto 18' member handed 14-year sentenceThursday's sentencing of confessed terrorist marks first time that any core member of the alleged 'Toronto 18' bomb conspiracy sent to prison

Colin Freeze

Brampton, Ont.Thursday, Sep. 03, 2009

A terrorist bomb-plotter has received a 14-year sentence for his role in a scheme to blow up government targets in downtown Toronto.

Saad Khalid, 23, who pleaded guilty in the so-called Toronto 18 conspiracy, was credited with seven years for time in pretrial custody. He will spend a maximum of seven more years in prison. He can apply for parole in two years four months.

Thursday's ruling may bode ill for accused in the case who have yet to face trial. Mr. Justice Bruce Durno said that even taking into account many mitigating factors – Mr. Khalid's youth, sincere regret, guilty plea and non-central role – Canadian courts have an obligation to punish terrorism harshly.

“ To be even a bit player in a serious and significant plan is a serious and significant infraction ”— Russell Silverstein, Saad Khalid's lawyer

“Canadian society relies on ballots and not bullets or bombs to change policy,” Judge Durno said in a 48-page decision he read aloud in court.

“ … Terrorist offences are the most vile form of criminal conduct.”

Mr. Khalid was close shaven Thursday and wore a black blazer, a tie and jeans to the courtroom, which was packed with his family, journalists, counterterrorism operatives, government lawyers and at least one police agent.

The young man buried his head in his hands after hearing his sentence, but his lawyer later said his client was actually pleased.

“He's perfectly happy,” Russell Silverstein said outside court. “ ... It could have been a lot worse.”

“To be even a bit player in a serious and significant plan is a serious and significant infraction,” he added.

The Crown's blow-by-blow of the Toronto 18 plot, laid out in a statement of uncontested facts filed this summer in the case of R. v. Saad Khalid, solely for the purpose of his trial

On June 2, 2006, Mr. Khalid was caught in a police sting. Hundreds of police swept across Toronto to round up more than a dozen Muslim youth. Mr. Khalid was caught unloading boxes marked “ammonium nitrate” from the back of a truck.

He admitted he knew the fertilizer was intended to be used to construct truck bombs to be detonated in the downtown core. He pleaded guilty in May.

The Crown alleges that only two suspects were privy to the full details of the bomb plot, and that their targets were the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and an unspecified military base along Highway 401.

“Saad Khalid was not the prime mover in the plot,” Judge Durno said, describing the young man as an accomplice kept ignorant of the fine points. Even so, the accused “knew serious bodily harm or death were likely” and “was not just a gopher” who unloaded fertilizer.

Mr. Khalid not only knew the gist of a overarching bomb plot but also bought electrical equipment, rented storage units, and even recruited an accomplice.

“I acknowledge that I made a huge mistake, and not a day passes by that I am not filled with regret for my role in this despicable crime,” Mr. Khalid told the court during a sentencing hearing last week.

He described himself as university student from a good home, but said he fell in with more radical Muslims because of a “disagreement on the issue of Canadian foreign policy, specifically Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.”

Mr. Khalid's Pakistani family raised him in Saudi Arabia, then moved Canada. The death of Mr. Khalid's mother when he was 15 left him “vulnerable” to terrorist recruiters, the judge said. He was a teenager at the time of his arrest.

Mr. Khalid spent three years in jail, some of it in segregation, before deciding to plead guilty.

Judge Durno accepted Mr. Khalid's remorse, but only to a point.

He agreed the young man had truly changed in prison, and that he likely would pose no threat to society upon release.

Only a handful of cases have been prosecuted under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, a controversial piece of legislation passed by Parliament in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

One of Mr. Khalid's co-accused, a teenager who was a peripheral member of the group, has already been found guilty of participating in a terrorist group through attending a training camp.

Charges against six of the original Toronto 18 suspects were stayed. Cases involving Mr. Khalid's nine co-accused are expected to start by the beginning of next year.

Publication bans shield the identities of the co-accused.

A 37-page statement of the Crown's case, uncontested by Mr. Khalid, is posted on globeandmail.com in an edited form to conform with the publication ban.

The document describes how the bomb-plot suspects were followed, wiretapped and infiltrated by police agents before the 2006 roundup. The document “provides a chilling and terrifying glimpse of what was likely to occur,” Judge Durno ruled.

Two down ...

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Another 'Toronto 18' suspect pleads guiltyMan enters guilty plea to one count of participating in a terrorist group; was considered peripheral player in plot that targeted Ont. Landmarks

COLIN FREEZE

Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2009

Another suspect in Canada's so-called "Toronto 18" terrorism case has pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge.

Ali Dirie pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of participating in a terrorist group.

He was considered a peripheral player in a plot that targeted southern Ontario landmarks, a case of homegrown terrorism in Canada that led to 18 arrests and, now, three convictions.

Now in his mid-20s, Mr. Dirie had been arrested and convicted of a gunrunning charge before the training camp and bomb plot in which other suspects are accused of participating in. He still faces a charge involving smuggling a handgun across the Canada-U.S. border.

Submissions for his sentencing will be made tomorrow, and Mr. Dirie will be sentenced on Friday, Oct. 2. Crown prosecutor Clyde Bond declined to say what prison term he'd seek.

Mr. Dirie is the second adult to plead guilty in as many months in the Toronto terrorism conspiracy that sparked the high-profile arrests of young extremists across the city in 2006.

After a surprise guilty plea last month, confessed bomb-plotter Saad Khalid was sentenced early this month to 14 years in prison after admitting he was part of a scheme to explode truck bombs in downtown Toronto. Mr. Khalid was caught unloading boxes marked "ammonium nitrate" from the back of a truck.

In handing down a stern ruling - despite mitigating factors such as Mr. Khalid's age, remorse and tangential role - Mr. Justice Bruce Durno said this month that Canadian courts have an obligation to punish terrorism harshly.

"Canadian society relies on ballots and not bullets or bombs to change policy," he wrote in the 48-page decision read aloud in court on Sept. 3. " ... Terrorist offences are the most vile form of criminal conduct."

In what was considered the first successful conviction on Canada's 2001 anti-terrorism laws, a youth was found guilty a year ago of attending a makeshift terrorism training camp north of Toronto.

After the arrest of 18 people in June, 2006, the case had been dubbed the "Toronto 18" conspiracy.

Seven suspects were let go on peace bonds. Eight adults arrested in the case will face trial in the new year. A publication ban is still in effect in the case of Mr. Dirie, preventing the publication of details that could identify the other accused.

Two down!

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

OTTAWA-Tears of joy and relief poured down Mohamed Harkat’s cheeks Monday as he heard a Federal Court judge lift the strictest of bail conditions the accused terrorist has been living under since being released from jail three years ago.

“It’s impossible to overestimate what a significant change this will have on his life,” said Harkat’s lawyer Norm Boxall. “It gives them freedom where previously they had none. He couldn’t go into his backyard without being supervised. You can’t imagine what it’s like to live for years under these kind of restraints and suddenly to be freed from them.”

The decision, and extent of the government concessions, clearly surprised Harkat, his wife Sophie and the family’s supporters, who packed the courtroom to hear what was expected to be a comparatively routine application by Harkat’s lawyers for an easing of the bail order.

But government lawyers pre-empted the hearing with the shock announcement to Federal Court Justice Simon Noël that they would not object to the lifting of 24-hour surveillance outside the Harkat home by Canada Border Services agents and nor would they object to the Algerian-born Harkat travelling alone within the borders of the capital region.

It appears to be a significant retreat by the government in a case conducted largely in secret.

Prior to Monday’s decision, the former pizza deliveryman had a strict curfew and was not allowed to leave his house unaccompanied. His phone was tapped and he was not allowed to read his own mail without it first being vetted by security agents.

Surveillance cameras inside and outside the Harkat house also monitored his movements.

A beaming Harkat left the Supreme Court building, where the Federal Court is housed, to the rousing cheers and applause of his family and friends and emerged into the bright late morning sunshine to say that the ruling came as a huge relief.

“I feel good,” he said. “This will affect all things. I am always worried about accidentally breaking conditions. There were too many conditions to remember. It was hard to think normal. It was like being on another planet.

Under Monday’s ruling, Harkat must continue to live with a GPS security ankle bracelet and continues to be barred from using a computer or a cellphone or a landline phone at any location other than his own home.

He had previously been barred from using any type of telephone.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) contends that 42-year-old Harkat is an al-Qaeda sleeper agent. The federal government is using the secretive security certificate process in an effort to deport him to his native Algeria.

Harkat came to Canada and applied for refugee status in 1995 after five years living in Pakistan, where he said he worked as a warehouse manager for the Muslim World League.

CSIS alleges that he travelled to Afghanistan in the early 1990s and developed a relationship with al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah, who ran two terrorist camps.

Harkat denies all the allegations and the government has used federal security legislation to keep secret whatever evidence it has.

Defence lawyer Boxall said Monday that he didn’t know why the government had changed its position on the bail restrictions but speculated it might be rooted in a revelation that a key CSIS source in the case had failed a lie-detector test.

A top-secret letter made public June 5 showed that CSIS had left Judge Noël with a distorted impression of the informant’s reliability and in a separate letter to the court senior CSIS legal counsel Michael Duffy said the agency’s lack of total honesty was “inexcusable” and “of profound concern to the service.

“It belies the commitment of the service and its employees to the judicial process,” wrote Duffy.

The government won’t say why it has changed its position but Boxall said he assumes CSIS has conducted a new risk assessment on Harkat.

“They have come to the conclusion that Mr. Harkat is not the risk that they thought,” said Boxall, “which is what we’ve always believed. This might suggest that their case is getting weaker but we don’t know.”

While a radical change for the better, the remaining conditions should also be lifted, added Boxall, because they still make it almost impossible for Harkat to find employment.

The battery-operated GPS system on Harkat’s right ankle needs charging for two hours a day and requires him to lie motionless during the recharging process.

“I bet every one of you has a cellphone,” said Boxall during an impromptu news conference. “They are everyday tools. Cells and computers are pretty much part of any employment in 2009. He hasn’t seen a computer screen since 2002.”

Harkat spent 31⁄2 years in jail after being arrested in December 2002. He was released almost three years ago after agreeing to 18 bail conditions that amounted to ultra-strict house arrest.

Those conditions allowed the government to raid Harkat’s house without warning, which is what 13 of its security agents, along with Ottawa police officers and sniffer dogs, did last May.

The controversial six-hour raid came three weeks before a rare public hearing in the case to determine whether the government’s security certificate against Harkat was reasonable.

That hearing is delayed until January next year because of the raid and because of concerns around CSIS’s handling of the case.

The agents took dozens of boxes of items from the house and seized Sophie’s computer, which was kept in the basement, an area Harkat is barred from entering.

The raid and its timing clearly irritated Noël, who amended Harkat’s bail conditions requiring government agents to get the equivalent of a search warrant prior to any other raid.

Harkat said he is looking forward to his new freedom.

He said his first act, as a relatively free man, would be to honour a promise to his 10-year-old niece Gabrielle Brunette and take her to dinner.

Asked where she wanted her uncle to take her, Gabrielle said she didn’t really care.

“We can go to Home Depot if he wants,” she said, threading her arm through Harkat’s.

Harkat’s wife, prime surety and former court-ordered chaperone Sophie, was more emphatic.

It appears, to me, that CSIS continues to believes that Harkat is a still a threat but the requirements of national security and the requirements of justice and the law cannot be reconciled. So, I assume he will be kept under more distant surveillance - until, I guess he makes a mistake and compromises himself or CSIS concludes that he is too far “out of contact” to remain as a threat.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

For instance, while several of the articles listed in these 4 pages are of foiled plots (i.e. plot to import nuclear technology into Iran), the Parisian bombing suspect probably has some useful information that might prevent an attack in the future (though admittedly his might be less useful as its nearly 20+ years old.) Has Canada ever used their arrested suspects as sources of intelligence on their methods, as opposed to just as sources of information on the attack itself?

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is a report on another case where the security restrictions on another suspected security risk are removed because, ”court orders for greater and greater disclosure jeopardized the spy agency's sources and methods. So, nearly all of the wiretaps and most of the human sources against Mr. Charkaoui were pulled from the case:”

In midst of legal arguments over the end of a security certificate on Charkaoui, the judge makes the sudden ruling from the bench

Les Perreaux and Colin Freeze

Montreal, TorontoThursday, Sep. 24, 2009

Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan held on a controversial “security certificate” for the past six years, will be a free man by the end of the day.

Federal Court Judge Danièle Tremblay-Lamer said she will issue an order by the end of the day lifting all conditions on the alleged terrorist.

In the midst of legal arguments over the end of a security certificate on Mr. Charkaoui, the judge made the sudden ruling from the bench just before lunch.

“There will be an order all conditions be revoked immediately,” the judge said.

Mr. Charkaoui's lawyer had just blasted the government for “legal acrobatics” trying to drop the case while leaving room for an appeal and keeping conditions on Mr. Charkaoui for the short term.

“It's almost willful blindness, not to see the harm being done. It's abuse, government abuse, it's not something that should be sanctioned by the court,” said his lawyer, Johanne Doyon.

The conditions on Mr. Charkaoui included electronic monitoring, bail and an order he not associate with certain people. He had been jailed from 2003 until 2005 after federal officials branded him an al-Qaeda threat, but was gradually granted increasingly liberty as the case stalled.

The Crown is asking the judge to leave an opening for an appeal later.

The unusual legal gambit followed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's decision to pull evidence from its case. CSIS, Canada's spy agency, initiates security certificate cases by making recommendations to federal officials.

The security-certificate law allows for CSIS to keep the evidence secret, and present it to judges and ministers in secret hearings. However, several high court judges have ordered greater transparency in recent years – often following legal challenges from Mr. Charkaoui himself.

Crown lawyers argued that while the CSIS case against Mr. Charkaoui remains fundamentally solid, court orders for greater and greater disclosure jeopardized the spy agency's sources and methods. So, nearly all of the wiretaps and most of the human sources against Mr. Charkaoui were pulled from the case.

“The disclosure of this information would be injurious to national security, and compromise the ability to effectively investigate security threats to Canadians,” CSIS spokeswoman Manon Berube said in an e-mailed statement to The Globe. “Among the most important elements of security intelligence collection is human sources. It is imperative that CSIS protect its sources, and guarantee their anonymity.”

Today's developments are another nail in the coffin of security certificates, a controversial tool that Ottawa has relied upon since the Cold War, to kick out foreign spies and alleged terrorists.

This position follows several embarrassing court-ordered revelations, including that CSIS has buried information from dubious sources and repeated evidence from U.S. allies who subjected al-Qaeda suspects to the harsh interrogations.

The security-certificate tool has been used about once a year since it was put on the books in the early 1990s, but no new cases have been launched in three years.

During the past two decades, the law has been used less than 30 times.

Once seen as an efficient means of deporting non-citizens who were branded threats, the future of security certificates are in doubt. It's proven increasingly difficult for Ottawa to deport such suspects given increasing constitutional challenges and the likelihood of foreign torture.

Through the power, federal ministers sign off on a certificate after viewing secret CSIS information, which allows officials to immediately jail, and eventually deport, a non-citizen.

The “intelligence” used to do this is disclosed to judges but never fully revealed to the accused, drawn as it usually is from secret agents and wiretaps, sometimes placed within Canada but also frequently “loaned” from foreign governments on condition that the provenance be kept secret.

As more and more CSIS agents are grudgingly compelled into court, they are digging in their heels against revealing secrets – not just in the handful of active security-certificate cases, but also in trials for terrorism suspects facing jail or extradition Security certificates have long shown diminishing returns for the government, to the point that some officials now talk about the power in the past tense. The five active security certificate cases are legacies of mid-1990s intelligence investigations involving immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Tens of millions dollars annually and dozens of federal officials are consumed by these cases, through constant litigation, ongoing monitoring of detainees, and a special prison built in 2005 that has only one detainee.

Counter-intelligence needs to be done in the shadows; law enforcement needs to finisgh in court.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Just in case people think CSIS has no basis to suspect people, this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, tells us that one of the accused Toronto 18”admitted Wednesday to procuring weapons, arranging false travel documents and trying to recruit extremists for a domestic terrorist group that planned bloody attacks on Canadian targets:”

A Toronto man admitted Wednesday to procuring weapons, arranging false travel documents and trying to recruit extremists for a domestic terrorist group that planned bloody attacks on Canadian targets.

In a lengthy agreed statement of facts, the Crown told court how Ali Dirie, who pleaded guilty Monday, was close to the alleged co-leader of the so-called Toronto 18 and continued his role in the conspiracy even while incarcerated.

Those acts were for a religious purpose and meant to “intimidate the public,” Mr. Bond said.

Justice Bruce Durno convicted Mr. Dirie, 26, of one count of taking part in and helping a terrorist group. That makes Mr. Dirie the third person now convicted in the plot to bomb Canadian targets such as RCMP headquarters and nuclear facilities, attack Parliament and take hostages.

The Crown stayed a second charge of committing an offence for the group – dubbed the Toronto 18 because of the number of people arrested in the summer of 2006 in the anti-terrorism sweep.

Mr. Dirie faces a maximum of 10 years, with Crown and defence indicating to Justice Durno they would jointly recommend a sentence.

The only issue, Mr. Bond said, was how much credit Mr. Dirie would get for the time he has already spent behind bars.

Dressed in a grey hoodie, jeans and head-cap, Mr. Dirie listened quietly to the 28-page account of the evidence against him, rising only to say softly, “Yes, I do,” when asked if he accepted the agreed statement of facts.

Court heard how Mr. Dirie had been jailed after being caught with loaded weapons at the Canada-U.S. border as he and another man returned from the United States in August 2005.

Much of the terror-group evidence against Mr. Dirie was based on wiretaps of telephone conversations he had with the alleged co-leader of the conspiracy, who cannot be named under a publication ban.

Even after his incarceration, Mr. Dirie still considered himself an active member of the group and devoted to the jihadist cause, court heard.

He continued trying to get guns for himself and others, tried to get false travel documents for himself and other group members, and tried to indoctrinate fellow inmates at Ontario's Collins Bay penitentiary to the extremist cause.

Court heard how the co-leader attempted to send him a package of books and CDs containing violent videos of attacks and bombings on military personnel and other jihadist propaganda.

He also encouraged and advised the co-leader in a series of phone calls.

During the calls, Mr. Dirie actually bragged about the pleasant conditions in jail – including his access to a basketball court, showers and work.

“This place is luxury, man,” he said during one call, court heard.

He also decried moderate Muslims and professed his readiness to “take orders” along with his commitment to the extremist cause.

The two men chatted about “pure girls,” wives, and women – which court heard are all code for guns.

Mr. Dirie was serving a two-year sentence for the weapons offences at the time two camps were held that police said were in preparation for the attacks. The car he and the other man were in when stopped at the border had been rented using a credit card belonging to the co-leader, court heard.

Earlier this month, 23-year-old Saad Khalid was handed a 14-year prison sentence for his part in the plot after pleading guilty in May. Nishanthan Yogakrishnan, 21, was found guilty by a judge and convicted last September of participating in, and contributing to, a terrorist group.

In the summer of 2006, an intense investigation involving Canada's spy agency and the RCMP ended with the arrests of 18 people in the Toronto area and the seizure of apparent bomb-making materials.

Eight men, including the alleged leaders of the group, are in custody awaiting trial.

Seven of the 18 people arrested have since had their charges dropped or stayed.

Three down!

The threat, of attacks - right here in Canada, by home grown terrorists, is real.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is a report suggesting that the Security Certificates, which are one of the primary tools available for restricting dangerous people, may be on the way out:

Are security certificates obsolete?Frowned upon by the courts, never taken out the drawer these days by crown attorneys, special tool appears headed for obscurity

Colin Freeze

Friday, Sep. 25, 2009

Civil-liberties victories in the courts for people jailed under Ottawa's controversial security-certificate legislation have eroded the federal government's ability to jail and deport foreigners deemed dangerous.

The flip side of the victories for defendants in the security-certificate cases, officials suggest, is that the government is left with fewer and fewer options to remove legitimately dangerous foreigners once they set foot inside Canada's borders.

No new security-certificate cases have been launched in three years.

Thursday, Adil Charkaoui left court a free man for the first time in six years after a judge lifted the last of his bail conditions. Ottawa branded Mr. Charkaoui a terrorism suspect in 2003, the last federal attempt to bring a “security-certificate” case against an individual suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

A couple of years ago, a vexed Canadian spy official neatly framed security officials' frustration in an internal e-mail: What if Osama bin Laden himself materialized in Canada, sitting astride a camel and toting an AK-47?

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service executive told his colleagues that only one policy response from Ottawa could be guaranteed: No one would dare sign another “security certificate.”

The quip amounted to an elegy for an extraordinary power that's grown so cumbersome to use it verges on obsolete – even if it was designed as an expedient way to deport foreigners on the grounds of “reasonable suspicion” that they were national security threats without having to reveal why.

The tool has existed since the Cold War, a time when foreigners in Canada didn't have anywhere near as many rights as citizens. Intelligence officials could bring secret dossiers to politicians that laid out why individuals had to be ousted for the greater good.

All that was needed to make it so were the signatures of a couple of cabinet ministers.

“I certainly signed a couple when I was minister,” said Ron Atkey, who handled immigration in the 1979 Joe Clark Progressive Conservative government.

Ottawa was far less “gun-shy” about cases then, he said. “They were all in camera . And the public didn't really have a right to know,” Mr. Atkey said. “You did it with great fear and trepidation,” he added, “but you did it.”

During the 1980s, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined, and higher courts ruled in favour of ever greater transparency and legal protections. Foreigners were invested with increasing rights.

“We never used it,” Reid Morden, a CSIS director in the late 1980s, said in reference to his time at the security agency. He said he saw security certificates as cumbersome and bad fit for the Cold-War espionage threat that was paramount at the time.

But he didn't mind having the “blunt instrument” handy. “It's always good to have it in the arsenal,” Mr. Morden said. “In the suite of powers, I think it's a useful tool.”

As the al-Qaeda threat mounted in the 1990s, security certificates returned to vogue. Even if the secret deportation dossiers grew a lot thicker, and the court battles that resulted became more public and protracted.

The essential unease among cabinet ministers with approving banishment remained.

Wayne Easter, a Liberal MP who served as solicitor-general from 2002 to 2003, recalls that he once spent three hours poring over a binder of Top Secret information before deciding to approve a certificate.

While he said he wouldn't reverse any past decisions, Mr. Easter said he'd like to see a system that better weighs security against civil liberties. “There needs to be better balance,” he said.

Ottawa is struggling to find one. The outcome of the Charkaoui case is seen as a watershed.

“Our objective is to ensure Canadians are safe from terrorist threats,” Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said in a statement circulated by his office. “We are examining the impact of the decision on that objective.”

The Charter has expanded the protection from the actions of the crown/government that every person in Canada enjoys. As a classical liberal I applaud everything that protects individuals from collectives. But not every individual, regardless of status. I disagree that e.g. illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay here and appeal, endlessly and I disagree that non-citizens should enjoy full civil rights.

I believe that bad intent, breaking the law, etc deprives one of the full protection afforded by the Charter; I also believe that full protection ought to be one of the benefits of full Canadian citizenship. Lawfully landed immigrants and visitors ought to have access to some, even most of the Charter’s protections, illegal immigrants and improperly documented visitors (e.g. refugee applicants) out to have only their fundamental human rights protected.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Another suspect in so-called ‘Toronto 18' pleads guiltyTurn of events marks third such plea in recent weeks ahead of this winter's highly anticipated trial

COLIN FREEZE

BRAMPTON, ONT.Monday, Sep. 28, 2009

Another suspect in the so-called ‘Toronto 18' conspiracy has pleaded guilty in a scheme to blow up government targets in downtown Toronto.

It is the third such plea in recent weeks ahead of this winter's much anticipated trial, as lawyers seek to sort out the main accused from the peripheral players.

Saad Gaya, a 21-year old, admitted Monday that he was part of an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to build fertilizer-based truck bombs and explode them in downtown Toronto.

Specifically, Mr. Gaya pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to be part of a terrorist offence. He was arrested unloading boxes marked “ammonium nitrate” from the back of a truck in June 2006, as hundreds of police swept across the Toronto area to round up a group of young extremists.

The shipment of three tonnes of fertilizer three years ago was actually an RCMP sting operation, led by one of two police agents who infiltrated the group. (A distinct agent had infiltrated a makeshift training camp months prior to the bomb-conspiracy sting.) A year and a half ago, Mr. Gaya emerged as a cause celebre around the time of one of his bail hearings. He was portrayed at sympathetic rallies, on activist Web sites and in the some press coverage as a Muslim youth who had been arrested on trumped up charges.

But on Monday Mr. Gaya admitted his role was analogous to that of his friend and co-accused Saad Khalid, who was arrested at the same warehouse and caught unloading the same bags of fertilizer from the back of a truck.

Mr. Khalid was sentenced to 14 years earlier this month after pleading guilty to his role in the scheme. However, for a variety of factors inherent to Canada's correctional system, it's anticipated he'll spend only two to three more years in jail.

In pleading out last month, Mr. Khalid said he was a bomb-plot helper, not a mastermind, and that he wasn't privy to specific details of the scheme – including the locations of the alleged targets, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service offices in downtown Toronto, the nearby Toronto Stock Exchange and an unspecified Canadian Forces base along Highway 401.

Mr. Khalid did, however, say he wanted to blow up targets in downtown Toronto, describing himself as a misguided Muslim who wanted to force Canadian Forces soldiers from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.

In pleading out today, Mr. Gaya may be seeking a similar sentence to Mr. Khalid, who has already completed most of his jail time.

Mr. Gaya wore a dark suit, beard and glasses as he pleaded guilty in a soft-spoken voice. The gallery was packed with his family, who had championed his innocence for years, but who had nothing to say after the hearing.

Outside court, Mr. Gaya's lawyer, Paul Slansky said his client will likely get less than 14 years given he was arguably less culpable than his friend, Mr. Khalid.

“To some extent, he was duped,” said Mr. Slansky, explaining Mr. Gaya was not privy to the mechanics of the bomb plot. He added his client “asked for assurances there would not be harm to people” from ringleaders.

Other potential mitigating factors, the lawyer said, include that Mr. Gaya expressed remorse to police in a lengthy videotaped interview after he was caught.

Mr. Slansky also pointed out his client “served over three years in custody and one of them was in isolation” – factors which should eat up most of his penitentiary term.

Sentencing arguments are scheduled for late December with a verdict on January 6.

At the front end of a sentence, Canadian courts generally credit prisoners two-for-one for the time they spent in pretrial custody.

Toward the end of a sentence, the federal correctional system obliges that nearly all prisoners be released at two thirds of their sentence.

All things told, Canada's correctional laws mean that many, if not most, of the remaining accused in the Toronto 18 conspiracy have already done most of their time should they be found guilty.

A flurry of defence bids to get the conspiracy charges tossed on technical grounds have failed. But the three-and-a-half years spent in arguments delayed bringing matters to trial, meaning that most accused will see a sizable reduction in their penitentiary terms, if convicted.

The pretrial custody credits mean that most of the accused will be understood to have served at least the equivalent of seven year sentence by the time matters come to trial this winter.

Only a handful of accused – particularly those accused of being the bombing masterminds – face life imprisonment. The rest face lesser charges, along the lines of participating in a terrorist scheme or being part of a terrorist group.

Seven accused in the Toronto 18 conspiracy had their charges stayed or were released on peace bonds. A youth peripheral to the scheme was found guilty and sentenced to time served last year.

A suspect who smuggled a handgun across the Canada-U.S. border for the group, Ali Dirie, is to be sentenced on Friday. He was already jailed when the core conspiracies were hatched.

With Mr. Gaya, Mr. Khalid, and Mr. Dirie having pleaded guilty in recent weeks, only seven adult accused are headed to trial at this point. More pleas are possible.

A publication ban prohibits identifying the co-accused.

Jury selection is anticipated to start in December.

At the time of the arrests there were suggestions that this was just a bunch of kids with a childish, fantasy scheme. The evidence emerging suggests this was a real threat. That being the case we can, must assume that there are more out there – more Canadian Muslims plotting against their country and plotting to kill their fellow citizens at the behest of foreign “powers.”

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

ctvtoronto.ca A third member of the terror cell known as the Toronto 18 has pleaded guilty in a plot to hit Canadian targets.

Saad Gaya appeared in a Brampton, Ont. courtroom Monday where he admitted to intending to cause an explosion on behalf of a terrorist organization.

Gaya, 21, was one of 18 people arrested in the summer of 2006 and charged in plot to attack several national targets, including Parliament and RCMP headquarters. The 2006 roundup, known as Project Osage, included the seizure of apparent bomb-making materials.

Outside the courts, Gaya's lawyer Paul Slansky said his client pleaded guilty because it was the right thing to do.

But Slansky added Gaya truly believed there was no plan to hurt anyone and had been "duped" by other members in the group. "Certain people had certain plans that were not communicated to Mr. Gaya and Mr. Gaya will be taking the position that he did not know their plans, he said. "He in fact had asked for assurances that there would not be harm to people."

The Crown and defence filed an agreed statement of fact as an exhibit. It will be read into the court record during Gaya's sentencing hearing. Arguments will take place from Dec. 21 to 23. The actual sentence will be announced on Jan. 6.

Gaya has been in custody pending trial since his arrest on June 2, 2006.

Last week, another member of the Toronto 18, 26-year-old Ali Dirie, pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Earlier this month, Saad Khalid, 23, was given a 14-year sentence after he pleaded guilty for his role in the plot.

So far, only one accused in the Toronto 18 terror case has gone to trial. That case resulted in a conviction.

Last September, Nishanthan Yogakrishnan, 21, was found guilty of participating in, and contributing to, a terrorist group.

Although he was 17 years old at the time of the crimes and was tried as a youth, Yogakrishnan received an adult sentence of 2 ½ years. He was released in May after being credited for time served before trail.

Seven others accused members of the Toronto 18, including the alleged ringleaders, remain in custody and are awaiting trial.

Seven of the 18 men and youths arrested have since had their charges dropped or stayed.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Austin Delaney and files from The Canadian Press

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Five terror suspects: $60-millionOttawa's controversial security-certificate program to rid Canada of alleged spies came with a multimillion-dollar price tag

Colin Freeze

Thursday, Oct. 01, 2009

Ottawa has spent $60-million over the past two years in its failed attempts to deport a handful of immigrants accused of having ties with al-Qaeda, The Globe and Mail has learned.

According to sources, the money has been used to fund legal cases involving five men detained under security certificates – a long-standing program that Ottawa has used in the hopes of ridding the country of suspected terrorists.

Security-certificate cases have become paralyzed in the courts and polarizing for the public, and are on the verge of becoming obsolete. On Wednesday, a Federal Court judge formally quashed the case against Adil Charkaoui, the Montreal-based Moroccan being detained on a security certificate, after lawyers representing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said the spy agency could not abide court-ordered disclosures of its secrets. Mr. Charkaoui is contemplating a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for the six years he spent under a federal detention and surveillance regime.

While public discussion of security certificates has long centred on legal principles, budgetary officials are now conducting a review to determine whether taxpayers are getting value for the money spent on litigation.

“The Treasury Board Secretariat has required that a comprehensive evaluation be conducted for the Security Certificate Initiative in 2009-2010, in its second year of funding,” reads a Justice Canada letter soliciting feedback from legal insiders this past summer. “The evaluation will focus on assessing the continued relevance and performance of the Security Certificate Initiative which includes the Special Advocates Program.”

The multimillion-dollar legal bill is being spent on both prosecution and defence, and it is not uncommon for as many as six lawyers on each side to square off in security-certificate cases.

It's these costs that are being put under a microscope as part of Ottawa's continuing “strategic reviews,” which are examining a host of federal programs. The Treasury Board is trying to assess the security-certificate program through “interviews, surveys and a review of documents and performance data.”

While the Justice Canada letters circulated to insiders don't affix a price to the program, some who were contacted by the Treasury Board say they were told it was pegged at $60-million over two years.

Value for money becomes a question given how ineffective security certificates have become. The federal government's legal battle to deport Egyptian Mahmoud Jaballah, is a decade old, having been launched in 1999. Cases against three other al-Qaeda suspects are also continuing, and unlikely to result in deportation because doing so would send them to homelands where they would probably be tortured.

However, proponents say the security-certificate process would be a bargain at any price, given how the tool was painstakingly created to balance civil liberties with national-security imperatives. Anil Kapoor, part of the “special advocate” class of lawyers recently created to fight these cases, said “the public does win. If any security-certificate procedure prevents one terrorist attack or ensures the release of an innocent person, it will be well worth the price.”

While the government did contact Mr. Kapoor for his views, he did not disclose the amount of tax dollars that have been spent.

When the Supreme Court found the security-certificate process was tilted in favour of the state – given how Crown lawyers could advance their arguments in secret, judge-only hearings – Parliament's fix was the creation of the special advocates to go to bat for the detainees in the secret hearings. This has added to the program's bottom line.

The special advocates don't charge the government exorbitantly – $275 an hour, which is more expensive than Legal Aid, but less than what many could charge in other cases. However, all the special advocates had to be screened for Top Secret clearance, and they often travel to fight their cases.

Similarly, the Justice Department has had to adjust, by redoubling its prosecutorial efforts. Justice is also compensating federal agencies – CSIS, the RCMP, and Immigration Canada – who are using more money and more personnel in these cases.

This is another “front” in the war against security. The first front was opened by activists like Alexandre (Sacha) Trudeau who championed the case of Hassan Almrei. Their implicit assumption was that the bumbling, jack-booted, American influenced security services had to be wrong and any ethnic had to be all right.

Rarely do we hear anyone in the national commentariat suggest that the Islamists and jihadists might be trying to infiltrate Canada in order to mount attacks against our country and our people.

I do not know if Almrei and Charkaoui and all the others are guilty or innocent; like 99.99% of Canadians I have no idea about the evidence the government might have; I cannot judge the level of threat. But neither can Sacha Trudeau or any of the journalists. Even the judges cannot “judge” because the issues they are currently, deciding are not about security; they are about the applicability of Canadian law to people in Canada. The fact is that every single person “in Canada” – with one foot on the tarmac – is fully protected by all the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I think that principle, which is now enshrined in out law and, indeed, is a Constitutional principle, is wrong and I think it must be changed. Changing it is much, much easier said than done.

The “change” I want is to a layered approach:

• Canadian citizens, in Canada, must, always have complete access to all the protections provided in the Charter;

• Canadian citizens outside Canada can access most provisions of the Charter but it cannot be used to shield them from the full force of the laws in the places in which they reside or where they are visitors: if a Canadian is arrested for trafficking drugs in Singapore (where the punishment mightinvolve capital punishment) that person cannot expect Canada to ride to the rescue, waving a copy of our Charter;

• Landed immigrants, in Canada, are entitled to many (even most) protections afforded by the Charter but they can be, should be deported whenever they are convicted of a crime (most crimes? just some crimes?);

• Legal visitors to Canada, including those “admitted to Canada” and awaiting an upgrade in their status to e.g. landed immigrant have fewer protections. They may, for example, be deported on some (national security related) suspicions; and, finally

• Those who are either illegals or those who have yet to clear immigration have NO protection at all, not even when they blurt out a refugee claim.

This is something akin to what Australia has now. We are not likely to get there. It would involve invoking the “notwithstanding” clause, probably over and over again, in the face of a veritable firestorm of outrage and protest – including some real Molotov cocktails tossed at government buildings – and a barrage of legal and political challenges. It is not clear to me that any living politician has the wherewithal to even try it here in Canada. That being the case, our defences are weak; we are vulnerable.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Durno noted that because Dirie worked with the group over a relatively lengthy period, "his degree of responsibility is also high because of the duration of his involvement."

During sentencing arguments, lawyers argued over the fact that Dirie had served time in isolation before his trial.

But the judge rejected an appeal to give Dirie three to one pre-trial credit for time he served in isolation. The judge said that Dirie was placed in solitary confinement because of his own actions while in custody.

"It was his own misconduct that contributed in part to his placement in segregation," said the judge, who noted that Dirie was also "an unlikely candidate for parole."

Dirie, the fourth member of the group to be convicted, pleaded guilty to charges that he helped the group get guns and travel documents.

His defence lawyer said his client was very sorry about the offence, adding that much of his motivation stemmed from anger over Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

But now, Dirie knows that violence isn't the answer.

"He realized that the means didn't advance his belief but in fact, if anything, retarded it," Nuttall said outside court.

"He profoundly regrets the means."

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CBC News A Quebec man has been found guilty of being involved in an international terror plot threatening European countries involved in military operations in Afghanistan.

Saïd Namouh was convicted on four terrorism-related charges, including conspiracy to detonate an explosive device, participating in a terrorist act, facilitating such an act and committing extortion for a terrorist group.

After the verdict was rendered, Namouh's attorney René Duval said he did his best for his client, but isn't sure he will appeal.

Quebec Court Judge Claude Leblond "is a very good jurist, so when you read his decision, there's nothing at first sight would stand up as an egregious error," Duval told reporters at the Montreal courthouse.

Namouh, 36, was accused of participating in a plot to force the Austrian and German governments to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

During his three-week trial, the court was told Namouh was an active member of the Global Islamic Media Front, considered to be a media tool of al-Qaeda and involved in jihad recruitment.

Crown prosecutor Dominique Dudemaine presented evidence that Namouh posted terrorist propaganda on the internet, on behalf of the front.

Dudemaine argued that Namouh spent hours creating and distributing propaganda videos, including images of the deaths of Western soldiers and suicide bombings.

Cybercrime investigators extracted videos, including how-to guides for detonating suicide bombs and encrypting emails, from his computer. They also found thousands of pages of transcripts of Namouh's posts suggesting he was very active in chat rooms, message boards and jihad forums.

Namouh was also accused of publishing a video of BBC journalist Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped in Gaza in 2007 by the Army of Islam, a Global Islamic Media Front affiliate.

Leblond said Namouh also prepared ransom demands on behalf of the Army of Islam.

The judge reminded the court that the Islamic front is a terrorist organization in the eyes of the Canadian law.

There is no evidence Namouh was planning an attack on Canadian soil.

Namouh, a Moroccan immigrant and permanent resident in Canada, was arrested in September 2007 in Maskinongé, Que., in 2007, following a lengthy investigation by RCMP and Austrian authorities. He is married to a Quebec woman and has lived in the province since 2003.

Namouh faces life in prison. He is scheduled to return to court in November.

With files from The Canadian Press

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DISCLAIMER: The opinions and arguments of George Wallace posted on this Site are solely those of George Wallace and not the opinion of Army.ca and are posted for information purposes only. Unless so stated, they are reflective of my opinion -- and my opinion only, a right that I enjoy along with every other Canadian citizen.

First member of Khadr clan testifies todayThe U.S. is seeking to extradite Canadian citizen Abdullah Khadr on a warrant alleging he sold arms to al-Qaeda while living in Pakistan

Colin Freeze

Monday, Oct. 05, 2009

A member of Canada's infamous Khadr clan will take the witness stand in Toronto today as his extradition hearing begins and in doing so, he will become the first member of the so-called al-Qaeda Family to testify in his own defence.

When Abdullah Khadr, 28, tells his story, the Canadian counterterrorism agents in the Ontario Superior Court will be reminded of a simple maxim: It's not the information you get, it's how you get it.

The Canadian citizen, whom the U.S. is seeking to extradite on a warrant alleging he sold arms to al-Qaeda while living in Pakistan, was held in a secret safe house in Pakistan and endured multiple interrogations at the hands of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its allies, including CSIS and the RCMP.

His defence contends that any statements made during and since these interrogations by Mr. Khadr are tainted because he claims he was tortured by the Pakistanis and threatened by the Americans.

Ultimately, the judge will decide how to square Mr. Khadr's alleged admissions with such legal principles as the right to remain silent and the right to counsel, in determining whether any of his statements ought to count at all.

The Khadrs, a family of Canadian-citizen siblings that includes Omar Khadr who is being held in Guantanamo Bay, were raised in Afghanistan by a fanatical Egyptian-Canadian father. Now, nearly 15 years after this man - known simply as "the Canadian" to his al-Qaeda cohorts - beat suspicions he was linked to a deadly bombing in Pakistan, it's his son Abdullah Khadr who stands accused of selling to al-Qaeda figures in Afghanistan $20,000 worth of certain bomb chemicals as well as projectiles for Kalashnikov assault rifles and mortars that he had allegedly acquired in Pakistan.

Acknowledged friends of Osama bin Laden, the Khadrs fled Afghanistan for Pakistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, though family members were soon picked up on both sides of the border. Two years after the exodus of the "Arab Afghans," the fugitive Abdullah Khadr was arrested in Pakistan - but only after, court records show, the U.S. government paid a $500,000 bounty to the Islamabad military dictatorship that existed at the time.

Top-ranking al-Qaeda members are worth millions, but Mr. Khadr was regarded as a catch in his own right. He was sent to a secret intelligence safe house, run by the host agency, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and agents from the CIA, FBI, CSIS and the RCMP came calling.

The core allegations were amassed after a series of lawyer-less interviews in a legal limbo. When federal agents asked Mr. Khadr if he was part of al-Qaeda, he replied, "No, I only buy and sell weapons for al-Qaeda," according to a court-filed transcript.

He is even said to have explained how his father sent him to a terrorist training-camp at age 14, and that he "knows everyone" in the al-Qaeda hierarchy.

Mr. Khadr returned to Canada following the year he spent in the ISI safe house. ("I was never in al-Qaeda" he said in an interview at the time.)

Yet just a couple of weeks after he came back, Mounties he had gotten to know and trust arranged to meet him at a McDonald's in Scarborough.

At that meeting, the RCMP arrested him on a U.S. warrant. That was in 2005, and Mr. Khadr has been held in a Toronto jail ever since.

The Mounties will tell their side of the story during the extradition hearings too, including how they travelled to Pakistan to conduct interviews, but never laid charges under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act. Part of the issue might have been that Mr. Khadr arrived at the RCMP interviews with an opaque hood over his head, according to court documents, and that the Pakistani ISI told the RCMP no lawyers would be allowed.

It's also anticipated that agents of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service will testify at the hearings, but hooded themselves, in a sense. This rare bit of testimony from CSIS will take place from behind screens, to shield the agents' identities. (In a pre-arrest interview Mr. Khadr said he knew them only as Mike and Bob.)

The CIA, often an unseen hand behind interrogations of Canadian al-Qaeda suspects detained abroad, is expected once again to be a no-show.

*****

Family treeKey members of the Khadr family include:

AHMED SAID KHADR (Father):

Born in Egypt, the engineer became a Canadian citizen in the 1970s. He went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to take part in resistance to the Soviet occupation. During the 1990s, he moved his Canadian-born children there and he was briefly held on suspicion of a bombing in Pakistan. Close to Osama bin Laden, Mr. Khadr was heralded as a "martyr" by al-Qaeda figures after he was killed in a battle with the Pakistan army in 2003.

ABDULLAH KHADR (Eldest son):

Abdullah Khadr leaves his Toronto attorney's office with his mother Maha El Samnah(left) after speaking with the media on Thursday December 8th, 2005.The Globe and Mail

Abdullah was put into a training camp at age 14, and he was allegedly directed by his father to get guns and missiles to Arab fighters in Logar, Afghanistan, in 2003. Arrested the following year in Pakistan on a $500,000 (U.S.) bounty, he was held in a secret safe house for a year, where Canadian and U.S. agents grilled him. He goes on trial in Toronto today on a U.S. bid to extradite him as an al-Qaeda gunrunner.

ABDURAHMAN KHADR (Son):

This self-described "black sheep of an al-Qaeda family" became a CIA mole after his 2001 capture. The U.S. agency installed him, he says, in Afghan prisons, at Guantanamo Bay and in Bosnia to get a handle on what Islamist militants were thinking and doing. He has lived freely in Toronto for years.

OMAR KHADR (Son):

After an al-Qaeda insurgent in Afghanistan pleaded with Ahmed Said Khadr for a translator, the then-teenager was sent to the front lines. Captured in 2002 at the age of 15, following a deadly battle, he was charged with murder in the killing of a U.S. soldier after allegedly launching a grenade. The Stephen Harper government is ignoring judicial orders to lobby for the repatriation of the Canadian citizen, now held for years in Guantanamo Bay.

Compiled by Colin Freeze

The judge will, I hope ignore what Khadr said and what he may have been planning to do – none of that matters. The judge mustdefend Mr. Khadr against the massive, invasive powers of the state. The state must always be judged to be a threat to individual liberty and liberty ought to trump security. Law courts, not armies, are the primary defenders of liberty. Soldiers, the second line of defence, ought to be proponents of the rights of the accused, even when those rights allow an obviously guilty person to walk free, because defending Canada, which involves defending liberty, is why we you are here and over there. What is Canada, after all, if it is not a place where liberty thrives?

I expect the judge to administer yet another blast to the Government of Canada’s loyal and hard working servants – the people who are doing their level best to get and keep suspected enemies off out streets and are foiling many and varied nefarious plots.

So, why come to a court of law, at all? Because there is no useful alternative, right now.

The big job was accomplished: whatever Khadr planned to do – and I, for one, am certain that he was up to no good because I trust our security services to get most things right most of the time – he was stopped. CSIS and/or the RCMP did their duty. There needs to be a legal way, which our civil and criminal law will not and, arguably, should not provide, to monitor him and prevent him from doing anything else wrong.

Sending our security and intelligence services into our law courts is not accomplishing the aim.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

And here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is a suggestion re: how to protect our security without stretching our legal principles too far:

How to design a better anti-terrorism toolWith the security certificate system defunct, we need to focus more on our criminal law system

Craig Forcese

Monday, Oct. 05, 2009

The security certificate system as a tool of anti-terrorism is dead. Last week, the government abandoned its case against Adil Charkaoui, supposedly as a lesser evil to disclosing information it says would jeopardize national security.

Four other cases continue, and the government could “win” a few in the short-term. But even if the government demonstrates a reasonable basis for its allegations, the saga will continue – security certificates are supposed to be about deportation. And that prospect seems vanishingly remote because of the risk that the four remaining individuals will be tortured if deported. All of this means the government will inevitably need a “Plan B” for the future.

So what now? Faced with similar dilemmas in designing law as a tool of anti-terrorism, other states have done two things of note. First, they have used the criminal law with greater vigour than Canada. Second, some have tinkered with conventional legal standards to authorize constraints on liberty outside of criminal prosecutions.

Back to basics: criminal law

The first strategy is, relatively speaking, uncontroversial. There are, of course, difficult challenges. The question of national security confidentiality is ripe in criminal cases, as much as it has been in Canada's security certificate cases.

In a criminal matter, where national security confidentiality and a fair trial cannot be reconciled, the government may be forced to elect for disclosure over security, or see its case fail. But this is a difficult balance best established in a criminal trial, rather than in a security certificate system that cannot accomplish its stated goals of removal from Canada anyway.

It is notable that Canada's criminal law reaches far enough now in penalizing terrorism-related activity. New offences pepper the statute books since their post-9/11 reorganization. They could capture much – if not all – of the actions apparently at issue in the security certificate cases, although they could not apply to the actual individuals in question because their alleged conduct predates the new crimes.

Focusing on criminal law would also prompt a necessary cast change. Canada's security intelligence service – CSIS – has been involved in security certificates for a long time. It has, however, little experience with a process in which the accused person actively contests government claims, aided by highly experienced “special advocates.” The experience has clearly pained CSIS, and the agency's reputation has been deeply tarnished by its failures to apprise judges of weaknesses in its cases.

CSIS has likely learned a lot and with procedural rules now more clearly established, one would expect an improved performance in the future. But why convert CSIS into an agency that does courtroom evidence well? Such a conversion risks detracting from the different role CSIS is supposed to serve – providing intelligence to guide actions by government. For all its own troubles, the RCMP is a police force that lives daily with courts. Shifting the focus of anti-terrorism efforts to criminal law would give investigative primacy to the RCMP, and place CSIS in a supporting role. That is how it should be when an accused person's liberty is at stake.

Special detention regimes

In designing a Plan B, the government might be tempted to emulate Britain and Australia. There, so-called “control orders” and prolonged detention without charge allow governments to react quickly on information insufficient to sustain a criminal conviction.

Certainly, the government may need to act pre-emptively, in an effort to disrupt nascent terrorist threats. It is indisputable, however, that the terrorism crimes in Canada's post-9/11 statute book allow much more pre-emptive action than was the case beforehand. One crosses the line of a criminal offence very early in the preparation of an actual act of terrorist violence. The so-called “Toronto 18” cases are partial evidence of that fact.

Moreover, Parliament will eventually re-enact the expired “preventive detention” provisions of the anti-terrorism criminal law, allowing short-term detention prior to the imposition of so-called “peace bonds.” While it has its own shortcomings, this system is to be preferred over its British and Australian counterparts. Not least, Canadian proceedings would be in presumptively open courts, not closed-door hearings.

There is no doubt that the liberty of more people could be more readily limited if Canada followed Britain. But it is difficult to argue that the absence of a British-style system in Canada truly puts public safety in peril. There is also the small matter that a free society cannot eliminate all risks and still be free. The architects of Plan B must be governed by this truth. It is time to give the criminal law a fair shake.

Craig Forcese teaches national security law at the University of Ottawa's law school.

I do not agree with Prof. Forcese but my grounds for disagreeing are weak. I do prefer with Australian/British model – even though it lets security trump liberty – which puts me at odds with my own values. That being admitted, maybe Forcese’s Plan B is a better way.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

The judge will, I hope ignore what Khadr said and what he may have been planning to do – none of that matters. The judge mustdefend Mr. Khadr against the massive, invasive powers of the state. The state must always be judged to be a threat to individual liberty and liberty ought to trump security. Law courts, not armies, are the primary defenders of liberty. Soldiers, the second line of defence, ought to be proponents of the rights of the accused, even when those rights allow an obviously guilty person to walk free, because defending Canada, which involves defending liberty, is why we you are here and over there. What is Canada, after all, if it is not a place where liberty thrives?

I expect the judge to administer yet another blast to the Government of Canada’s loyal and hard working servants – the people who are doing their level best to get and keep suspected enemies off out streets and are foiling many and varied nefarious plots.

So, why come to a court of law, at all? Because there is no useful alternative, right now.

The big job was accomplished: whatever Khadr planned to do – and I, for one, am certain that he was up to no good because I trust our security services to get most things right most of the time – he was stopped. CSIS and/or the RCMP did their duty. There needs to be a legal way, which our civil and criminal law will not and, arguably, should not provide, to monitor him and prevent him from doing anything else wrong.

Sending our security and intelligence services into our law courts is not accomplishing the aim.

It seems to me that there is room to go backwards here, again.

In the 18th century, when private citizens operated as armed agents of their governments under letters of marque it was possible for that citizen, when captured to offer his "parole", his word, that he wouldn't continue his activiities if he was released. This presupposed a man of honour.

Having said that, it is the closest that I can think of that would apply to the Al Qaeda pre-Congress of Vienna mindset.

The procedure could only be that an individual captured on a battlefield under arms would first of all be given the assumption of innocence, in so far as he would be assumed to be a soldier until proven otherwise. As a soldier he would be granted the privileges of the captured soldier - which is to say indefinite detention for the duration of hostilities. UNLESS - he was prepared to offer his parole in which case he would be assumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to be a man of his word.

Then if he were picked up again on the battlefield, demonstrably having broken his word then he could be charged and treated as a common criminal.

This allows our enemies two kicks... the first one on us.

But it conforms to the maxim: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

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"Wyrd bið ful aræd"

"If change isn’t allowed to be a process, it becomes an event." - Penny Mordaunt 10/10/2019

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards” ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Spy services granted new powerFederal Court decision paves way for the international surveillance of Canadian citizens suspected of terrorism links

Colin Freeze

TorontoTuesday, Oct. 06, 2009 01:27PM EDT

Canada's spy services have a new power: the ability to listen in on “homegrown” Canadian suspects travelling abroad to terrorism hot-spots such as Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In a Federal Court decision released today, Mr. Justice Richard Mosley decided the court can sign off on domestic warrants that allow for the international surveillance of Canadian citizens suspected of links to terrorism.

These warrants would be used for intelligence gathering, not necessarily for criminal prosecutions in open court.

The application came as Canadian spies sought “urgent” permission in January to follow two unidentified Canadians, presumably terrorism suspects, travelling to an unidentified country from Canada. These travels “pertained to threat activities which, it was believed, the two individuals would engage in while travelling outside of Canada,” reads today's ruling.

“Individuals who pose a threat to the security of Canada may move easily and rapidly from one country to another and maintain lines of communication with others of like mind,” Judge Mosley said. “Information which may be crucial to prevent or disrupt the threats may be unavailable to the security agencies of this country if they lack the means to follow those lines of communication.”

Federal spy masters had been seeking the authority for years, amid complaints that Canada's Cold War-era laws failed to address the threat of alleged Canadian terrorists who travel outside the country.

The specific problem? The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the country's “human intelligence” spies, can get wiretaps only for use in Canada if a judge signs off on a warrant. The Communications Security Establishment, the country's secretive “signals intelligence” agency, has the technological ability to listen to anyone it wants, anywhere in the world, but it is legally banned from spying within Canada or on Canadian citizens, wherever they may be.

It was illegal for Canada's spies to listen in on Canadian terrorism suspects the moment they left the country. This left intelligence officials complaining their investigations could suddenly go dark.

In the past, bureaucrats and judges had difficulty with the CSIS argument that it should be allowed to deputize the international powers of the CSE to advance domestic investigations. Judges maintained they enforced Canadian laws and had no power to sign off on arguably illegal or “extra legal” spying in other countries.

Judge Mosley has authored a compromise: He and his colleagues will sign off on such warrants provided the “international” spying actually takes place within Canada.

This essentially means the CSE can listen in on international conversations involving Canadian suspects via satellite signals and data lines that can be intercepted from Canada. From there, powerful algorithms and search engines can seek to isolate the “Canadian” conversations.

"It recognizes that security threats are global and highly mobile. CSIS can now use this tool to defend Canada's security," said Manon Berube, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

"In our view this decision recognizes that security threats move easily from one country to another and that countering those threats required a new approach."

Two things are striking about Judge Mosley’s 41-page ruling.

One is the absolute haste with which spies felt compelled to act. They had been snooping on their targets for two months when the two Canadians boarded an outbound plane for parts unknown.

“Given the urgency of the situation laid before me … I determined it would be inappropriate to delay the issuance of the warrant,” Judge Mosley wrote. The ruling does not make clear what, if anything, happened to the suspects after they went overseas nine months ago.

It’s not clear whether the suspects ever returned to Canada. If CSIS feels strongly enough about a terrorism case, the spy agency can hand over files to police in hopes that they can put together a criminal case, but there have been no significant terrorism arrests in Canada the intervening period.

The second striking aspect to the ruling is that it blacks out any allusions to the CSE’s spy craft, even though the basic principals under which electronic eavesdropping agencies intercept phone calls, e-mails, and internet chats are well known, at least in general. This is surprising, given Judge Mosley has ordered disclosures of arguable state secrets in past rulings. It’s matter of common practise to sanitize any information that would tend to identify suspects who haven’t been arrested.

A number of recent Canadian prosecutions have brought the issue of homegrown terrorism to the fore, but this may be the tip of the iceberg.

There are growing concerns that young Canadian extremists are flocking to global hot spots. For example, the U.S. Congress has heard recent testimony that Canadians are among the Westerners flocking to an Islamist insurgency movement in Somalia known as “the Shabab.” A few years ago a young Canadian university student was arrested in Afghanistan and accused of helping insurgents there.

There were also unconfirmed reports from Pakistan's tribal areas that Canadian citizens were among the militants killed in a U.S drone strike.

If I understand this ruling then it is, indeed, a big step forwards and it is long overdue.

There should be, in my view no need to ever bring this sort of information into open court: spies and terrorists ought not to be arrested, charged and tried in our courts unless they are of the “homegrown” variety, and perhaps not even then; there needs to be a better way.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Judge says no to terror suspect's bid for cellphone accessA federal judge has denied a request from terror suspect Mohamed Harkat to further loosen his bail conditions - with one exception

OttawaThe Canadian Press

Wednesday, Oct. 07, 2009

A federal judge has denied a request from terror suspect Mohamed Harkat to further loosen his bail conditions – with one exception.

Mr. Harkat will be allowed to travel outside the national capital region to places in Ontario and Quebec if details can be worked out with federal officials.

In a ruling released today, Justice Simon Noel said it was too early to consider Mr. Harkat's other demands, given that the substance of his case has yet to be heard.

Among other things, Mr. Harkat requested removal of the electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, permission to have a cell phone and more freedom to use a computer.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service alleges Mr. Harkat is involved with the al-Qaeda terror network – a claim he denies.

Last month the court did ease bail conditions considerably, meaning no more surveillance cameras in Mr. Harkat's Ottawa home, no need to approve visitors and no further interception of mail and phone calls.

The government has been trying to deport the Algerian-born Mr. Harkat using a national security certificate, a rarely employed immigration tool, since his December 2002 arrest.

He and four other men face removal from Canada under certificates. All are fighting to remain in the country.

This is modestly good news.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is a report that one of the potentially key witnesses is playing fast and loose skirthing the edge of law and duty in an effort to get “evidence” (or just rumour) in front of the MPCC:

A Canadian diplomat yesterday resisted federal government attempts to stop him from testifying before an inquiry into Canada's Afghan detainee controversy, filing evidence with the probe to prove he's got vital information to impart.

But in an unusual move, Richard Colvin shipped his affidavit to the Military Police Complaints Commission probe in a sealed envelope – a statement that will remain unread by inquiry officials until government censors vet it.

Mr. Colvin, who was previously posted in Afghanistan for Ottawa, sent his statement to the inquiry under virtual lock and key in order to guard against the risk of being jailed for violating national secrets.

The dramatic presentation of evidence came the same day that more legal jousting erupted between the Harper government and the commission, another bout of wrangling that could end up further delaying long-postponed hearings.

The military police watchdog has been trying to probe whether Canadian soldiers were complicit in handing over Afghan prisoners to that country's intelligence service – because they knew, or should have known, detainees were likely to be tortured in Afghanistan's notorious jails.

But government lawyers have repeatedly sought to delay and thwart public hearings.

Yesterday commission chair Peter Tinsley announced the tribunal will appeal a September federal court ruling that severely restricted the scope of the Afghan inquiry. It was a judgment that agreed with Ottawa's arguments that the watchdog had originally overstepped its boundaries.

Responding to Mr. Tinsley, Justice Department lawyers argued a motion calling for a suspension of the hearings until courts settle the question of the scope of the inquiry.

Alain Prefontaine, the lead government lawyer, said such an adjournment could mean a two-month delay in hearings.

And if that happens, it would mean the public portion of the inquiry would not resume before Mr. Tinsley, a Liberal appointee, reaches the end of his single term as commission chair on Dec. 11. The Harper government has refused Mr. Tinsley's request for reappointment, with Defence Minister Peter MacKay advising him in a letter “to start your career planning as soon as possible.”

Mr. Tinsley yesterday adjourned hearings and said he would rule next week on whether they would continue during an appeal.

Paul Champ, a lawyer for the human-rights groups that triggered the inquiry, said he's worried the Harper government is trying to run out the clock until Mr. Tinsley leaves, after which time they'd “appoint somebody who's friendly” and would “shut it down.”

Mr. MacKay, however, said the Tories have no intention of interfering with the inquiry.

Mr. Colvin, who now works at Canada's embassy in Washington, has been subpoenaed to testify.

He was the political director of an Afghanistan provincial reconstruction team until 2007.

Mr. Colvin's lawyer has argued the diplomat has personal knowledge of what military police knew about the risks of torture.

But federal lawyers have used the anti-terrorism law to bully Mr. Colvin, citing concerns about national security, his lawyer alleged in a letter to Ottawa this week. The law carries penalties of jail time for disclosing national secrets.

That's why Mr. Colvin sent the sealed affidavit to the watchdog, in order that he avoid legal jeopardy even while trying to prove his testimony would be worthwhile. It gives the commission a copy of it while government lawyers not affiliated with the inquiry vet it.

Of course, I do not know what Mr. Colvin knows or what he thinks he knows or what he heard from local Afghans. If he knows something – first hand knowledge – then the commission should, probably, hear about it. If someone told him something then it is, I believe it is just hearsay and, consequently, valueless and would serve only to muddy the waters.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

More on the same: According to this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the CBC News web site, a fourth member of the Toronto 18, this one a so called ringleader, has admitted his guilt:

Zakaria Amara pleaded guilty Thursday to charges related to the alleged Toronto 18 plot to set off three fertilizer bombs, two in Toronto and one at an unnamed Ontario military base.

Amara, 24, has been alleged to be one of the ringleaders in the plot to recruit and train extremists to carry out the attacks, which never transpired. He is the fourth adult to admit guilt in the affair.

In a Brampton, Ont., courtroom, Amara pleaded guilty to two counts: knowingly participating in a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion for the benefit of a terrorist group.

Justice Bruce Durno entered convictions against Amara on those counts before proceeding to sentencing. An agreed statement of facts is being read into the court record.

In all, 17 men and youths were arrested in the Toronto area in June 2006 and detained following an investigation by CSIS. An 18th person was arrested in August 2006.

The suspects faced charges including participating in a terrorist group, receiving training from a terrorist group, providing training and intending to cause an explosion that could cause serious bodily harm or death.

The offences allegedly took place between March and June 2006 in Mississauga and a rural township near Orillia, Ont.

The Crown alleges that the group's potential targets were the CN Tower, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Toronto CSIS office.

Seven of the 18 people arrested have since had their charges dropped or stayed. Another six are in custody awaiting trial.

Four down!

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"

Judge denies CSIS bid to revisit secrecy issuesDecision should bring to a close the security-certificate case of Adil Charkaoui, once accused by spy agency of ties to al-Qaeda

LES PERREAUX AND COLIN FREEZE

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009

The Federal Court has dealt the government another setback in its attempts to deport alleged terrorists, ruling that key questions about what Canada's spy service must reveal in court do not deserve another look.

So-called security-certificate cases have become a high-stakes battleground over how Canada is to balance individual rights with the country's need to protect itself against terrorism. Federal lawyers last month chose to walk away from a key case - that of Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan living in Montreal - rather than divulge information that they said could compromise national security.

Federal Court Judge Danièle Tremblay-Lamer yesterday rejected complaints that she was demanding too much transparency from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, a clandestine agency launched 25 years ago, and now complaining it is fighting a losing battle to protect state secrets.

"It's understandable a disagreement on evidence would create ... the belief the court put individual rights ahead of the demands of national security," Judge Tremblay-Lamer wrote in her 68-page ruling, "but that belief is unfounded."

Federal officials rely on CSIS information to initiate security-certificate cases, which amount to expedited bids to jail foreigners as high-level threats and then deport them. Yesterday's ruling should be the last word on the long-running Charkaoui affair.

Judge Tremblay-Lamer rejected a Crown request for a higher court to revisit some of the secrecy issues raised by the case. This disappointed CSIS officials, who hoped to get some legal clarity that would guide future cases.

"It is unfortunate that, given the unique nature of this decision and the implications for national security, the judge did not agree that the case presented aspects that warranted an appeal," said Manon Bérubé, a spokeswoman for the spy service.

During six years of litigation, Mr. Charkaoui won several bids to force CSIS to reveal information used to brand him a threat. Now the spy service is struggling to launch future cases. No new security certificates have been issued for years, and Mr. Charkaoui is free of the threat of jail, surveillance or eventual deportation.

The Charkaoui case was one of five active security-certificate cases that became bogged down in procedure and multimillion-dollar litigation. The remaining cases are at least seven years old.

Throughout them all, a predictable pattern has emerged: As defence lawyers press for ever greater disclosure, CSIS refuses to reveal information touching on its spy craft. And judges - regardless of what they think of state secrecy or the strength of each case - will not allow Islamist extremists to be sent back to homelands where they might be tortured.

Implicit in all of this is the question of whether Canada's spies belong in open court at all. Increasingly, CSIS operatives - who don't work to the same legal standards as police - complain of being sucked into court against their will. And it's not only security-certificate cases that are problematic.

Currently CSIS officials are testifying in the pretrial phases of criminal cases, often appearing as uncomfortable witnesses as defence lawyers test their investigative rigour. Within days, two CSIS agents will be called to testify - anonymously, and from behind screens - about their dealings overseas in the Abdullah Khadr extradition matter.

Federal officials had hoped to salvage a moral victory from the Charkaoui case by asking Judge Tremblay-Lamer to kick up some key questions to the higher courts. But Judge Tremblay-Lamer ruled the request amounted to an end run around her orders to disclose more CSIS information to Mr. Charkaoui.

The judge recalled how she asked the government to contact foreign intelligence agencies to ask their permission to disclose evidence lent to CSIS. On this point, security officials changed their minds "from one week to the next" on the damage that such a request could to do to national security, she said. "It's relevant to recall to what point the notion of national security is a matter of perspective," Judge Tremblay-Lamer ruled. "There can exist grey zones where disagreement is possible."

Mr. Charkaoui, now 36, had been branded by government officials as a top-tier al-Qaeda threat to Canada.

His lawyer is planning a lawsuit and related actions. "If they didn't want to divulge their evidence, they shouldn't have pursued the security certificate," said Johanne Doyon.

She said the CSIS national security claims were "nothing but a smokescreen."

I understand CSIS’s very legitimate desire for ”some legal clarity that would guide future cases,” but, as Perreaux and Freeze say in the story, ”implicit in all of this is the question of whether Canada's spies belong in open court at all.”

My answer is that they should not. We need a new, better way to deal with national security cases – those involving legal and illegal residents and Canadian citizens alike.

Parliament owes the people of Canada its most urgent attention on this matter. But the media has made this issue so politically dangerous that most parliamentarians, led by our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and his colleague the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Michael Igantieff, are too frightened to address it.

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It is ill that men should kill one another in seditions, tumults and wars; but it is worse to bring nations to such misery, weakness and basenessas to have neither strength nor courage to contend for anything; to have nothing left worth defending and to give the name of peace to desolation.Algernon Sidney in Discourses Concerning Government, (1698) ----------Like what you see/read here on Army.ca? Subscribe, and help keep it "on the air!"